Cool Green Lake on a Hot Day

 

6/14/26 Green Lake walking path

Unusual for mid-June, temps were expected to climb to the mid-80s on the day of USk Seattle’s outing to Green Lake. I encouraged anyone (including myself) who got overheated to retreat to the air-conditioned public library. Almost everyone opted to stay at the lake, though, where a strong, cool breeze and plenty of huge shade trees kept us comfortable. I was surprised by how pleasant it was all afternoon, despite the heat.

Green Lake

Purely conjecture, of course, but something about their 
body language made me think they were on a second date.

Filled with sunbathers, the beach looked like Malibu, while swimmers, paddleboarders and kayakers took to the water. It looked and felt like summer!

Since I’m such a frequent Green Lake visitor, the throwdown was especially fun for me. It’s like seeing the familiar through fresh eyes again.

A great turnout, even on a blistering day!

A Walking Tour of Chinatown-International District

 

6/13/26 A lion dance kicks off our walking tour of Chinatown-International District.

Taha Ebrahimi

Mature, urban trees can witness many changes in a neighborhood. Historian Cynthia Brothers of Vanishing Seattle and Taha Ebrahimi, author of Street Trees of Seattle, offer an intriguing walking tour of Chinatown-International District, one of Seattle’s oldest neighborhoods. I joined about a dozen others last Saturday afternoon on the first in a series of such tours. All six free tours, supported by local cultural grants, sold out within 90 minutes, and more than 500 people are now on the waiting list! I was lucky to grab a spot!

Gathering at the historic Panama Hotel Café, where I’ve sketched many times, the tour began with an energetic lion dance performed by martial arts organizations. Then, for the next two hours, we made 15 stops around the District for notable buildings and trees. Cynthia and Taha told many fascinating stories about people, the community and the trees that make up this diverse neighborhood.

You may recall that I used Taha’s book a couple of years ago as my own walking and sketching guide to street trees in Maple Leaf and other neighborhoods. It was illuminating to hear the stories in person of seven specific CID trees that she had written about.

It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to listen, observe, sketch and take notes, all at the same time! My pages are a scribbly mess, and my notes are probably indecipherable, but they serve as a great memory of an informative and fun afternoon.

A really special part of the tour was visiting Connie Chen's shop, Sun May Co., located in Canton Alley. Her family has owned the shop since 1911.

Connie Chen at Sun May Co.

After the tour, some of us went to Bush Garden, Seattle's second-oldest Japanese restaurant, which recently moved to a new location. We were offered a Mar-tree-ni, a special cocktail designed just for us!

Cynthia Brothers talks about a mural dedicated to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII.

Group photo courtesy of Taha and Cynthia.

Bad Sketches

 

6/6/26 cloud study (photo reference)

Sometimes sketches just go bad. What can I learn from them?

Weather forecasters recently warned of rain, high winds and thunderstorms. The wind was real, but the rest was over-hyped. Walking through Maple Leaf Park, wondering if I would be caught in the impending storm, I saw a foreboding wall of dark clouds building to the south. I snapped a quick photo and hustled home.

Although I’ve tried painting clouds with watercolors, I’d never tackled them with Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons. Initially, I used my usual wet-in-wet “licking” technique. Then while the page was still wet, I went in directly and aggressively with dry crayons. I should have known better, but I used a Hahnemühle Akademie student-grade sketchbook, which doesn’t hold up quite as well as the 100 percent cotton version that I’m used to. The result (above) is not a disaster, but it’s not the look I was going for. I’ll try again sometime in the cotton book and see if that’s better.

The sketch shown below, made on location, was a mistake of a different sort. I was happy to see that the Green Lake Starbucks had opened their rooftop deck for the season. In the distance, these sunlit trees caught my eye. I was so eager to go straight in with color that I failed to think about the composition – which is nonexistent. Even as I began, I was already wagging my finger at myself: I should have done a thumbnail first! When I knew I was in irreversible trouble, I decided to distract myself by working on the murky area behind the trees – maybe the high contrast would help! HA!

6/12/26 Green Lake neighborhood

Someday I’ll go back and try that one again, too.

If I can learn even one thing, a bad sketch isn’t bad at all – just ugly. 😉

Caran d’Ache + Paul Smith Bicolors Special Edition

 

I succumbed: The Caran d'Ache + Paul Smith Bicolors Special Edition

I fell off the wagon. No judging, please.

During a week of high stress and anxiety, I saw that Goldspot Pens had the Caran d’Ache Paul Smith Special Edition Bicolors set in stock, and after months of resisting, I crumbled. Bicolors are my weakness! C’est la vie.

Like Cd’A’s first set of colored pencils in collaboration with British fashion designer Paul Smith (released in 2020), the latest bicolors set features Smith’s design palette and trademark stripes on the tin and sleeve. I must admit that the tin design appeals to me more than the palette. In particular, I like the thin, subtle strip of stripes on the lid’s lip on an otherwise solid black tin.

This is my favorite part of the tin -- the subtle strip of stripes on the tin's lip.

Unlike that first tin, which contained Supracolors, the latest edition contains bicolors – 12 water-soluble pencils (24 colors) and a small watercolor brush. Each pencil is stamped with “Caran d’Ache + Paul Smith” in silver. (It’s intriguing that the 2020 set puts Smith’s name first: Paul Smith + Caran d’Ache. I wish I’d been a fly on the wall when the discussion took place for that change.)

Before I even used the pencils, I was aghast by the factory sharpening: Very messy collars (that’s the type of thing I’ve seen on cheap pencils from China and India) – I don’t think I’ve ever seen any Caran d’Ache pencils that were as badly presented as these. And look at the big chip in the pink one on the left! Shame on you, Caran d’Ache.

Very sloppy collars and a huge chip

The Smith-curated palette is very . . . fashionable, I guess? Unsaturated and sophisticated, it’s a nice counterbalance to the Supracolor set, which has a more vibrant range. Although it’s not at all a range I would pick out for myself, it’s not bad for urban sketching, and it also has a good range of values (ever since my experiments inspired by the wacky Germanier palette, I find myself viewing hues as values as well as temperature). It’s not great for landscapes, though – it’s short on natural greens.

Swatches made in Hahnemuhle Akademie watercolor sketchbook. I used my Prismalo swatch page to identify as many colors as I could. 

Now let’s get to the all-important cores. A couple of months ago when the set was announced, a reader brought an interesting controversy to my attention (see comments at end of this unrelated post). Apparently the new Smith set, along with last year’s Alpine Frost holiday collection, contains student-grade Swisscolor cores. That would be a significant step down from all the previous bicolor sets, which were promoted by Caran d’Ache as containing Prismalo cores. (How insulting to Smith! Perhaps a reflection on the change in branding to put his name after Caran d’Ache’s? The plot thickens.) The reader later reported that when she asked the question directly to Cd’A’s Instagram account, she was told the Smith set actually contained Supracolor cores:

“Just to reassure you, these bi-colour pencils are actually made with our Supracolor leads, not Swisscolor. We hope you’ll enjoy their quality and performance!”

First of all, even without calipers, I could easily see that the Smith cores are too thin to be Supracolors. A few swatches were all it took to convince me that the marketing person who responded to the inquiry was sadly misinformed: These are definitely not Supracolor cores, which are much softer and creamier.

Smith bicolor at left, Supracolor at right: No way are these the same core!

The next question, then, is whether they are student-grade Swisscolor cores or, like the previous bicolor sets, the mid-grade Prismalo cores. I hadn’t used Prismalos in a while, so I refreshed my memory with a few swatches, and they are as I had remembered them: Much softer than the Smith bicolors.

My large set of Swisscolors was dispatched during my downsizing the past couple of years. However, I still have a small set that came with the kids’ travel kit I got a few years ago (a-ha – as silly as that purchase was, it came in handy after all!). I compared a few swatches.

Sample Swisscolor swatches from my large set

The bicolors’ hardness and dryness seem closer to Swisscolors than Prismalos. However, it’s important to look at the washes, not just the dry swatches. Often the pigment content of a water-soluble pencil becomes more apparent in its wash than in its dry state. When I compare the washed bicolor swatches to washed Swisscolors and Prismalos, they look closer to Prismalo. Since we can’t get a straight answer from Caran d’Ache, we may not be able to know for certain, but I’m unconvinced that they are Swisscolors.

Sample Prismalo swatches

Miffed by the drop in quality and Cd’A’s lack of transparency, I still had to make a sketch with them (below). Taking a cue from my recent experiments with trying on the themed Blick Neocolor II palettes, I challenged myself to use as many colors in the Smith bicolor set as possible. Even as an experiment, 24 colors in one sketch are a bit much, and I lost count at some point, but I used at least one side of each bicolor and several of the opposite sides, too. While that’s certainly more colors than I would ever normally use together in one sketch, they don’t look too bad together. I guess Paul Smith knows what he’s doing.

As for Caran d’Ache . . . one disappointment after another.

6/9/26 Paul Smith bicolors in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook (photo reference)

Getting My Ballpoint Chops Back

 

6/10/26 The Sanctuary and Smith Tower, downtown Seattle

MJ and Roy sketching inside Columbia Center

Last winter when USk Seattle met at Madison Centre, Roy and Mary Jean both missed out. Since our art play date on Wednesday began with a cold morning, it was a good opportunity to introduce them to this cushy, indoor location. With floor-to-ceiling windows all around, this office building’s lobby offers great views of old and new downtown architecture.

Since it was National Ballpoint Pen Day, which I observe annually, I brought along a trusty Bic 4-Color, one of my favorite ballpoints for drawing. It had been a long time since I last sketched with ballpoint, and my hatching felt rusty. While I was a little reluctant to take on architecture, the lovely domed top of The Sanctuary inspired me to push ahead anyway (above). Behind the dome was the glassy, ultra-modern F5 Tower (F5? Whose dumb idea was it to name a skyscraper after a function key?).

Feeling warmed up, I moved on to my beloved Smith Tower (like the Space Needle, it’s a subject I can’t resist if I see it). Hatched clouds – now, that’s something I don’t recall trying before!

W Hotel and Columbia Center lobby stairway

Bic 4-Color for the win!

By the time I finished that page, the morning began warming up, so I walked across the street to the federal courthouse’s sunny lawn. From there, I had a nice view of the pyramid atop the W Hotel. (Can you see the pattern here? I like to draw only the tops of buildings.)

After lunch at Columbia Center’s food court, Mary Jean and I both tackled the intriguing lobby staircase that offers seating along the sides. As soon as I began, I regretted the subject – all that horizontal hatching!

It was a fun day of getting my ballpoint chops back.

My Sketchbook’s Gifts to Me

 

Another partially used sketchbook conquered.

My goal to fill partially used sketchbooks continues. My latest conquest is this Hahnemühle Akademie Aquarelle sketchbook. For student grade, it contains excellent paper, but once I discovered Hahnemühle’s watercolor books containing 100 percent cotton paper, especially on location, there was no turning back.

What makes this book unusual is that it is entirely filled with sketches using reference photos and some imaginary work – not a single page drawn from life. I did a lot of portrait practice, both human and animal, direct watercolor challenges, workshop exercises, composition practices – all done from home.

An exercise in imaginative drawing and watercolor play.

The superpower of working on location is that the sketch becomes permanently infused with sensory memories from the experience. When I look back at an urban sketch, especially from my travels and other experiences that were new to me, all the sounds, smells and feelings of making the sketch come rushing back.

This book doesn’t evoke any memories or feelings in that way. Even when I sketch from a photo I’ve taken myself of a place I know well, the superpower of drawing from life doesn’t work. Although seeing a portrait made of an Earthsworld stranger sometimes  makes me recall whatever struggle or satisfaction I may have felt from an approach or medium I was trying, the subject and experience have no other emotional connection.  

Lots of Earthsworld people! I usually crop images neatly for this blog, but here are the full pages, messy scribbles and all.

This volume, however, is emotionally meaningful in a different way. I began using it in March 2023 in the midst of my most difficult, painful caregiving years. Most pages were filled late at night when I could finally take respite to recover from the day’s challenges so that I could sleep. I now see the book as the direct product of the art therapy that probably saved my life (or at least my sanity). Recalling that time, it’s hard to look through now, but I’m also filled with gratitude.

Composition studies using the Caran d'Ache mixed media set

I also appreciate the purely experimental nature exhibited in this book. With no connection to subject matter, I could focus exclusively on media, technique, approach or whatever else I was exploring. With my grounding in urban sketching, I tend to think of my sketchbooks mainly as repository for my on-location observations. The pages are finished products. But to many artists, a sketchbook is a place for play and experimentation. I have sometimes worried that I don’t do enough of that kind of play in my daily-carry sketchbook, but this book makes me realize I have been doing it all along – I just keep the play in a separate volume.

It is always with great satisfaction that I put away a completed sketchbook into my bookcase designated for that purpose, and my urban-sketch-filled books are usually the most rewarding. This one surprised me for all it has given back to me.

I filled the few remaining pages with doomscrolling prevention tactics and my recent Blick themed Neocolor II palette experiments.

A Pink Pick for National Donut Day

 

6/5/26 Top Pot Doughnuts, Wedgwood neighborhood

My dilemma is always the same. When I go to a donut shop with the intention of sketching my treat, what kind do I choose? One of my favorites to eat (fritter [see last year's], Bavarian cream [in 2017], chocolate-glazed raised), none of which are particularly attractive, or a pretty one that I may not enjoy as much but will be more fun to draw? Since it was National Donut Day, which I look forward to observing annually, my sketchbook won the argument with my mouth: A bright pink raspberry-glazed raised ring.

Lots of families came in briefly for after-school treats (kids scarf down donuts surprisingly fast), but most purchases were for takeout. I was lucky to catch one young boy who was there with his dad to celebrate the last day of school.